


Sorority

by JohnPhillipaSoosa



Category: Inn Between (Podcast)
Genre: Coming of Age, Friendship, Gen, Learning to Rule, Tween Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnPhillipaSoosa/pseuds/JohnPhillipaSoosa
Summary: What is it like to be Princess Marie, to have everything you want except family, to be safe even as everything crumbles around you? What is it she wants most in the world?
Relationships: Princess Marie & Lydda, Princess Marie & Sisters
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Sisters Lost

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Hannah Wright, some of this lore is taken from a Patreon post. She always answers questions so I don’t think she’d mind. If I’m wrong, apologies.

“Papa, can you tell me about my namesake? Aunt Marie?” Princess Marie asked, at a rare private breakfast in her father’s quarters.

It was a simple question that came on the tail of careful calculation. Was her father in a good mood? This was almost never possible, especially these days, when the rumors weren’t just of assassins but of sedition. Were they alone? Also almost never possible, now that she had those confounded lady’s maids. Had it been long enough since the last time she asked to fit the “older” in “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” that worst of excuses? This one was toughest. By Marie’s count, it had been a year, but thirteen wasn’t all that different from twelve, really.

But her father surprised her. He considered the pears in the bowl in front of them, selected one, and inspecting it, said, “What do you want to know?”

Marie straightened in her seat immediately and paused, because she honestly hadn’t considered what she would do if she got this far. She consulted the mental catalogue of questions she kept that Needed Answering. The first one was so vague, but the goal was to at least get her father talking: “What was she like?”

Broderick took a bite of his pear, taking his time chewing before he answered. “She was very smart. The way she picked up new ideas, and played with them—it always amazed me.”

“What do you mean, played with them?” Marie leaned forward. This was more information about the long-gone Marie than she’d ever received.

Her father...smiled. Just a little. Just for a moment. “Avaline and I were always straightforward sorts. Impatient, you know.”

Marie suppressed a smile. Oh, she knew.

“But Marie used to take things that were difficult to understand as challenges.” He took another bite of his pear and talked out of the side of his mouth. “She would pick things apart for fun, and then she’d explain them to us. And when she did, suddenly it all made sense. I still think about the ways she talked about economics, sometimes.”

“So, she’s not like me, then,” Marie said, spreading some marmalade on her toast.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that at all,” Broderick said. “You might have inherited some of my impatience, but you’re just as smart as she was.”

Marie beamed, pleased, and took a bite of her toast.

After a couple silent moments, wherein her father was unreadable but not angry, Marie decided to hazard another question. “Do you think she would have been a good queen?”

Broderick’s countenance darkened a little. Uh oh. She hoped he wasn’t angry, that would be the end of the conversation. 

Her father placed the core of the pear carefully on his plate. His voice was surprisingly soft, when he spoke. “Marie would have been an excellent queen.”

Marie looked down, tapping her toast against her plate. “Do you miss her?”

“I miss both my sisters.” His voice wasn’t so soft anymore. “Nothing in life is guaranteed, my dear daughter. You must always prepare for the worst.”

He said things like this all the time. She tried to take them seriously, but she was lost in her thoughts today. “I wish I had siblings.”

“Yes.” Broderick sighed. “It is nice, to have someone around you know you can trust.”

*

Marie first met the sisters when they were introduced as classmates. This happened, sometimes, that she shared her tutors with other young people, children of nobility or visiting aristocrats. Her father changed her tutors often enough, for fear of proximity leading to vulnerability, that sometimes they already had students when her father hired them. These other children weren’t her friends. She understood this, even though her father never said so. Many of them were the offspring of political enemies. She was unfailingly polite, and carefully observant, but they weren’t her friends.

The sisters were different, though. Their clothes were fairly plain, even though they were clean, and the girls themselves had odd manners. Lydda was stiff as a board, doing nothing more than was asked of her, watching her sisters hawkishly; Min was occasionally openly defiant, and Seri didn’t seem to understand what was asked of her most of the time. The tutors had no trouble teaching them facts, but they didn’t seem comfortable, not once.

They looked a bit familiar, though. How on earth did she know them?

Marie asked one of her lady’s maids where they had come from, and her lady’s maid lied. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

It wasn’t until late that night, when Marie heard crying coming from the secret passage, that she found out.

The secret passage was one of those things that Marie had promised her father never to talk about. It had something to do with her namesake, and how she died. She knew that her rooms used to be the rooms of her father and his sisters, and she knew that at the other end was another bedroom that was usually kept empty. Broderick and Avaline had escaped from assassins when they were children, but the teenage crown princess had not.

Marie tried not to consider this as she eased back the panel that covered the passage, padding along it in the dark. She used to have to take a candle with her, but since she’d been a dragon, the dark had lost some of its menace.

The door at the other end of the tunnel was lighter than she remembered, the hinges hidden behind the bookcase giving off nary a squeak. The crying on the other side turned into a yelp.

“Oh my gods,” whispered the crying girl sitting on the bed, and she hastily dragged her hands across her eyes and jumped to her feet to curtsey. “Your Highness! I’m sorry, did I—was that a secret passage?”

The girl was Lydda, and she wasn’t petrified and still anymore. Marie closed the bookcase behind her. “Were you crying?”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, honest. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Lydda was still curtseying.

“No, it’s okay,” Marie assured her. “You don’t have to curtsey. Are you okay?”

Lydda straightened. She was taller than Marie, and ganglier. She hesitated. “I um…I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?” Marie hopped up on the bed. “Come sit.”

Lydda did, slowly, not meeting Marie’s eyes. “Your Highness, can you keep a secret?”

The question sent a thrill through Marie. Nobody ever asked her if she could keep a secret. She never had any friends who had secrets to tell her. “Yes, I can. If you call me Marie.”

“Marie,” Lydda attempted, and then nodded. “Okay. Um. I think…I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.” Her voice cracked, her eyes welling up again as she spoke. “I think we’ve been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” gasped Marie. This was suddenly very interesting. “By who?”

“I don’t know, see, I don’t know, ‘cuz my brother said, don’t go anywhere, and he said that he’d be back before the finishing school ended for the year to come and see us, and he said this is exactly where he wanted us to be for a while, because we’d be safe,” Lydda said, the story spilling out of her along with her tears. “And I promised him I’d take care of Min and Seri, but how can I do that if I don’t know why we’re here or what’s going on?”

Oh no. Marie held out her hands uncertainly, wanting to help, settling for giving her a pat on the shoulder. “Then who took you here?”

“The king’s guard,” Lydda said, looking her in the eye for the first time. “And you have to do what the guards tell you to do, right? And they took us to the king, and His Majesty said that my brother asked him to take care of us, but that doesn’t make any sense!”

“Why not?” Marie asked, although she had to agree that it was uncharacteristic of her father.

“Because how does my brother know the king?” Lydda demanded. “There’s no way that’s true.”

“Well, who’s your brother?” Marie asked.

Lydda sniffled and wiped her nose. “His name is Meltyre, and—”

“Meltyre the wizard?” Marie demanded.

Lydda looked up sharply. “Yes? How did you know?”

_There was nothing comfortable about being a dragon. She felt itchy and hot all the time, and her body didn’t move like it was supposed to, and talking around a mouthful of teeth like this was so hard and confusing…_

_The young wizard and his friends bowed and were introduced to her servants. Not to her, she noticed, because she was basically an animal right now anyway. The wizard was here to help, apparently. He approached her with some hesitation, as she lay in her spot on the floor of a minor dining hall, because she didn’t currently fit in her bedroom._

_“Hi,” he said. He was one of the ones who’d rescued her in the first place, wasn’t he? The one who’d cast a lot of flashy spells that missed their mark. Considering she’d been his mark at the time, she was grateful for that. “Um, I mean, hi, Your Highness.”_

_“Whhyy are youuu hhheeeere?” she’d asked him, trying to make her voice obey her mind._

_He looked her in the eye, and he saw…something. Something that made his countenance change. Something that put a slight note of confidence in his speech. No, not confidence; compassion._

_“It’s going to be okay,” he said gently, as if he’d had to say it many times before. “I think I can fix this.”_

_It was the ‘I think’ that convinced her. An adult who was lying would have left it out. She uncurled from her spot, watching the wizard’s eyes go wide with panic but hold his ground, and said, “Go onnnnn, thennnnn.”_

“Meltyre the wizard saved me, him and his friends!” Marie said excitedly. “They rescued me and then he turned me back human, when I was a dragon!”

“He did what?” Lydda said, not quite tracking. _“Meltyre_ did that?”

Marie told her the whole story in a rush. “When they came back, my father gave them a mission to stop a lich king! He even sent Captain Brindle after them, to make sure they get there okay! Meltyre must have asked my father to come and get you.”

Lydda listened in awestruck silence. “I…suppose…”

“You’re safe here, don’t worry,” Marie said, trying to mimic Meltyre’s tone, since it had comforted her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Her new friend didn’t look entirely convinced, but at least her eyes were dry now. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course,” Marie said defensively, unused to having her thoughts questioned. “You’ll see, he’ll be back before you know it.”

Lydda took a deep breath. “Well. I’m glad you’re here, at least.”

Marie beamed.


	2. Sisters Captive

The night after the day that the king was beheaded in a coup, it was Lydda who sneaked up the secret passage at the sound of crying, and held Marie in her arms while she bawled.

“Are you next?” Lydda asked at one point between her choking sobs. “Should we escape?”

“N-n-no,” Marie managed to say. “Lord Den-den-denetrah said—he said he’d k-k-keep me alive if I was a g-good girl.”

“He’s so nasty,” Lydda said, with more venom than Marie expected. “We could escape anyway.”

“W-w-where would I g-go?” Marie wept. “I have to take—take care of my—my people. I have to st-stay.”

Lydda hugged her tightly, hugged her until her sobbing had leveled out to the occasional shudder.

“What’s going to happen?” Lydda whispered eventually, voice quiet over Marie’s shoulder.

Marie squeezed her eyes tight shut, the last few tears running down her face. “I don’t know.”

*

They soon found out.

Denetrah cared little for the lich king or the mission to defeat him. He cared even less for the king’s promises to some wastrel adventurers, but killing little girls wasn’t his style. Not yet, anyway.

This was how Marie found herself sneaking to a place she was technically allowed to go, but only had actually seen once.

“Lydda?” Marie whispered into the dank air of the dungeon under the castle. She’d managed to give her lady’s maids the slip and was determined to see her friends. “Min? Seri? Lydda…”

“Marie?” said Seri’s little voice from behind a door down the hall, immediately shushed by two others. “…Sorry.”

“Oh girls!” Marie rushed up to the door, standing on tiptoe to see into the small barred window in the door. “Are you okay? Is everyone well?”

The three sisters were sitting on a blanket on the floor, Seri and Min leaning into Lydda’s arms. “We’ve only been here a day,” Min said.

“We saw a rat!” Seri declared.

Despite her sisters’ cheer, Lydda looked absolutely relieved to see Marie. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“I think Lord Denetrah just means to forget you here,” Marie said apologetically. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to forget you.”

“Meltyre will come back for us,” Min said, stating it as indisputable fact.

Lydda winced.

The wince made Marie’s heart break. She sank back down to her feet for a second so Lydda couldn’t see how affected she was by this sudden wave of love, for her friends who were the closest thing she’d ever have to sisters.

Gods, she couldn’t do anything right now, not really, but even so, she felt suddenly determined.

“Lydda,” Marie said, going back onto her toes. “Min. Seri. I swear to you that I will find Meltyre. I swear, okay? I’ll bring you back to him.”

“How?” Lydda blurted out.

Marie swallowed. “I don’t know for sure yet. But I have an idea.” She looked Lydda dead in the eye. “I swear.”

*

Carefully, Marie practiced penmanship, and thought hard.

She had no idea why Denetrah was so obsessed with her penmanship. She’d be the first to admit that it was fairly messy, but at least dedicating this much time to it gave her plenty of time to calculate.

She was the last surviving member of the royal family in the kingdom. But she didn’t have the resources to stage a contrecoup; few allies except a couple of her lady’s maids and one or two adults who looked kindly on her. She had no respect and no actual power.

She was the last surviving member of the royal family...in the kingdom. Avaline. Avaline was still out there somewhere, trapped in the Wood of Woe. Avaline was a fierce warrior, they said, and her father always said she protected him. She needed Avaline. But how to find her? There was no question of her going herself—

“Your Highness?” One of her lady’s maids entered, dipping a quick curtsey. “You said to tell you if Meltyre the wizard or any of his other friends were heard from?”

Marie sat up a little straighter. “Yes? Do you know where they are?”

“They were just at the front gate,” said the maid.

There was no question of her going to find Avaline herself, because what she needed were heroes! And Meltyre, exactly the person she was looking for, had delivered himself and his party to her door!

Marie blotted her practice page, pulled out a new sheet of paper, and began to write. “I need you to bring them a message.”


	3. Sisters Found

The heroes came through. Marie knew they would.

After the contrecoup, things settled into a kind of normal. Avaline had a sort of ruthlessness that was familiar, like Marie’s father, but she directed that ruthlessness into protectiveness rather than paranoia, and made sure in equal measure that when Marie spoke, she knew what she was talking about and that she was listened to. Her friends were always around now, and even though not all the heroes were here, she knew she could ask for their help anytime.

It took a few months, but Marie began to think things would be okay.

*

“I didn’t know what I should get you,” Seri told Marie with all the gravity she could muster.

“You didn’t have to get me anything.” Marie tried to match her seriousness, although what she wanted was to grin. This was the best birthday she’d ever had, and easily the best birthday party, a bright and lovely dance where there were no boring speeches and if any of her court were using it as an excuse for politics, they weren’t telling her about it.

“Well I did,” Seri said earnestly, pulling a large parchment out from behind her back. It was a drawing of several figures, on a green field with a castle in the background. “So I drew our family. Like here’s us, and Meltyre, and Sterling, and you, see?”

Marie took the picture gingerly, her chest swelling. “I’m part of your family?”

“C’mon, Marie, you’re basically our sister,” Lydda teased, nudging her a little.

Perhaps she was going to cry. “I love it, Seri. I’m going to hang it in my room.”

Seri smiled beatifically.

Elsewhere in the ballroom, a song started up, and Min hopped to her feet from where she’d been sitting on the floor. “Dancing time! Seri, dance with me.”

“Okay!” The two younger girls disappeared in a giggling flurry, leaving Marie and Lydda laughing.

A young man—young Lord Henry Vast, A Boy—appeared suddenly, blushing all the way to his ears. “Um, Miss Lydda? May I have this dance?”

“Okay,” Lydda agreed cheerfully, and allowed young Lord Henry to take one hand while she waved to Marie with the other. “I’ll be right back!”

Marie waved her goodbye, and then considered what she might do next. Dancing sounded nice…and she knew exactly who she’d like to dance with. She handed off Seri’s drawing to a lady’s maid with strict instructions, and then hurried over to the Court Wizard.

Meltyre was sitting with Captain Sterling off to one side, both of them laughing at something Meltyre had just said. Sterling looked up as she approached. “Oh, hello, Your Highness, Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you very much,” she said. “Meltyre, will you dance with me?”

Meltyre cringed a little. “Ah, I’m not a…very good dancer—”

“Meltyre, if the Princess asks you to dance, you have to say yes,” Sterling scolded gently.

“It’s true,” said the princess, offering her hand.

The court wizard grimaced and took it. “Okay, I guess.”

Despite what he said, Meltyre was a decent dancer, for all his concentration on getting the steps right. Marie remembered that he’d had to learn recently, under the sharp tutelage of his sisters, and was pretty impressed.

“I had a question for you,” she said, as they spun slowly around the room, narrowly avoiding a collision with Min and Seri.

“Uhh, okay?”

Marie hesitated. On the one hand, this is what dancing was for, talking about hard things in a setting that meant one participant could leave, but also having a sort of privacy. On the other hand, an answer she didn’t like had the potential to be very disappointing. And on the third hand, by asking the question at all, with her being the Princess and Meltyre being her Court Wizard, she might get the answer she was hoping for, but a disingenuous one out of fear or submission.

“Please be honest with me,” Marie said, and that caught Meltyre’s attention enough for his nervous gaze to focus on her. “See, Seri drew a picture of all of us and said we were all a family. And then Lydda said we were basically sisters.”

“Um.” Meltyre’s brow knit, trying to follow. “Okay?”

“Well I’ve never had siblings,” Marie said. “My dad says he missed his sisters all the time, and I see Avaline looking at my father’s portrait so sad sometimes, and my Aunt Marie loved them so much that she died for them, basically.”

Meltyre nodded along with all this. As it had once before, ages ago now, his face softened with compassion that looked like confidence. “What’s your question, Your Highness?”

“My question is, um.” Marie took a quick breath. Be _brave._ “Do you think of yourself as my big brother, then? Because—” she added hastily, “because I would like that.”

The expression that crossed his face was one she’d felt before, once when she was standing outside the door of a cell in the dungeon. He didn’t say anything for a minute, just squeezed her hands. “I...yeah, of course—the girls have already adopted you, it only makes sense…”

Marie felt light and floaty. She felt loved. “Thank you, Meltyre.”

“Of course that uh...that comes with some side effects, you know,” he said, trying to concentrate on dancing again. “Like I’ll have to come up with an annoying nickname for you—”

“Like you call Lydda Squirt!” Marie said happily.

He grinned. “Yeah. And there’s always some light teasing. Not in front of anyone important, of course.”

“That's a compromise I can make.”

Meltyre chuckled as the song ended, and they did the customary bow and curtsey, but as everyone else left the dance floor, he also gave her a quick hug.

Oh gods, was she _crying?_ That was so _weird_ —even though this was nice and she was definitely hugging him back—

Meltyre let go before she had a chance to feel too embarrassed, and then before Marie could even address it, the sisters had returned in a flurry.

“There you are!” Lydda said, with Seri and Min in tow. “We should dance next. Boys are weird.”

“Boys are weird,” Meltyre confirmed. “Never forget that, girls.”

“Meltyre!” Lydda said, blushing, while Min and Seri giggled.

Marie giggled too, even though she wasn’t sure what Lydda was so embarrassed about. “We should definitely dance next. I want to dance with all my siblings.”

“Oh me next!” insisted Min.

“I don’t ‘spose anyone else wants to dance with me,” Meltyre said, and was immediately drowned out by Seri and Min.

“Nooooo!”

Meltyre laughed. “Fine, maybe Sterling will dance with me.”

“Yeah!” Lydda said, hopping up and down. “Ask Sterling to dance!”

The color drained out of his face. “Oh, no, I can’t do that.”

“Do it!” shrieked Min, and the other girls immediately joined in, including Marie, pushing their big brother toward the perplexed captain of the guard, yelling, “Do it! Do it!”

And the joyful clamor faded into a riotous birthday evening, and it was the happiest Marie could remember being, there with her family.


End file.
